


Days of the Dead

by farad



Series: Modern Mercenaries [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 08:09:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16512536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farad/pseuds/farad
Summary: For Boogies' awesome Halloween challenge, 2018: ghosts stuff. For the Prompt: Vin, any, any, "The visions started after that. Dreams of waking in a strange place...":





	Days of the Dead

He’d had dreams like this before, dark woods at night, moonlight just bright enough to make out the presence of others, low voices bearing sharp words of warning or worry.

 

But he wasn’t asleep now. The pain meds, which Chris – the bastard - had managed to slip to him somehow, had worn off enough for the various injuries to make resting impossible.

 

Though, now that he thought about it, they were still in his system. Perhaps they were causing a waking dream – an hallucination?

 

“You were not here last year.” The voice was rough, like that of someone who had spent decades smoking cigarettes. It was neither deep nor high, neither masculine nor feminine, and in the pale light, he couldn’t make out the features.

 

It took him a time to feel the weight of the silence and the realize that the words had been as much a question as a statement. His own voice sounded distant to him, and the words seemed to come from deep down, dredged out with effort. “No, I been living here ‘bout nine months – just after the beginning of the year.”

 

Saying the words aloud, considering the length of time this ‘experiment’ had been going on, made him wonder anew if it were indeed a dream. Nine months he’d been living here, with them. The two of them.

 

He hadn’t expected to make it a month, sharing a house – sharing a bed – with not one, but two men.

 

The next words echoed his thoughts – perhaps they were his thoughts. “I would not have expected it to last that long. Neither of them are the type to share their love easily. Bodies, yes, especially Buck. But not love.”

 

His hip, riddled with shrapnel from one of the explosions during their escape three days before, throbbed suddenly and sharply, and he twisted, trying to shift his weight. That movement agitated the damage in the muscles of his lower back, and despite himself, he fell to his knees on the cold ground.

 

The new position eased the pain, and as he caught his breath, he looked up at the figure in the shadows. From this angle, he thought he saw the curve of breasts, but it could have been a trick of the light and shadow; the color of the clothing was hard to determine, seeming to be both pale and dark at the same time.

 

“I wonder if you’re worthy of that love.” There was a sharp anger in the words. “You are injured because you did not follow the plan – if you had been killed, it would have destroyed him – both of them. Do you not appreciate that?”

 

It wasn’t a new thought; it had been the underlying message in Chris’ fury and Buck’s sadness in the emergency room and on the flight back. More pointedly, Ezra, rarely one to be blunt, had said words very similar to those when he’d been alone with Vin during their return.

 

“I ain’t trying to get myself killed, or to be a hero,” he said, the words familiar as he’d said the same ones to Ezra. “But we didn’t know if that boy was there by choice or not, and I didn’t want to take any chances.”

 

“It seems your definition of ‘chances’ in this case is different from that of the others. This stranger’s life was worth more to you than your own?”

 

He felt the anger churn in his gut. “Of course not,” he snapped then his breath caught as his back once caught. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to breath, forcing himself to relax. As the pain eased, he said more slowly, “I was trying to save that kid’s life. But I’m not willing to get myself killed. I thought I could do it, get to him and get him out before the first charge went off.”

 

“How’d that work out for you?” There was a hint of dark humor just under the anger in the words.

 

Pain came again, but this time, it was a different one. The pain of failure.

 

He drew in a breath, as deep as he could, but that brought on a cough. A series of coughs.

 

It took time, and he thought that perhaps the shadow might be gone – or that he might wake up or the drugs might clear his system. But as his breathing and the various pains settled to a point of toleration, the shadow remained with him, and the question still hung between them.

 

“He’s dead.” The words scalded as they climbed up his throat and across his tongue, a flame of bile and acid dredged from deep within.

 

“He’s haunting you,” the shadow said, amusement more clear now than before.

 

Vin blinked and looked closer; the moonlight was no brighter, but he thought that he saw a strand of hair against the darkness. It seemed to reflect the moonlight, and he thought he saw a hint of color to it, a brightness that seemed gold, but also slightly copper. Maybe.

 

If it were the case, though, then this shadow – this shade – was not the young man who had died in his arms four days before. That person had had dark hair and dark eyes, the pupils wide and black and full of anger.

 

Full of hate.

 

“I made a mistake. But I didn’t know at the time, and I wasn’t willing to risk it. To risk the possibility that he didn’t know what was actually going on.”

 

The shade shifted, a tilt of the head that suggested confusion, or at the least, a reconsideration. “You were willing to risk your life – to risk the happiness of Buck and Chris – for . . . some sense of honor?”

 

Vin frowned, annoyed that this was so similar to the way Ezra had put it. “Weren’t honor,” he said, as he had to Ezra. “Just don’t like the idea of innocent people getting hurt.”

 

“Yet he wasn’t innocent. He had chosen to be an extremist, to be with this group.”

 

“Yeah, but we didn’t know that for sure. I didn’t want to take the chance. I don’t like to live with that kinda doubt. And truth be told, Chris don’t either.”

 

The shade made a noise, something like a laugh, but the words that followed were bitter. “You’d be surprised how much doubt he can handle. Take, for example, the fact that he has let you into their home. Into their relationship. Certainly – and as evidenced by what happened – he has ample reason to doubt.”

 

Vin sighed. The argument was as circular as it had been with Ezra. “What do you want from me?” he asked, knowing that inevitably, it would come to that. It always came to that. Ezra had wanted him to not take chances, to not upset Chris, to not hurt Chris – ultimately, to not put Ezra’s life in doubt by upsetting the life of the man he worked for, and, Vin suspect, the man Ezra himself had feelings for.

 

But the shade . . .

 

“That is a very dangerous question, one you should never ask the dead.” But the words were not angry or even amused, nor did there seem to be a warning in them. It was as if they were words that had to be said, some sort of legal disclaimer. The next words were said with more effort, as if they were the ones that mattered. “I worry for him – for them both, truth be told, but Chris more so. He was mine for a long time. I want him back.”

 

Worry came, like a dead weight in the pit of his stomach. “He ain’t yours to take,” he said flatly, instinctively pushing against the cold ground, trying to get back on his feet.

 

It hurt – he almost fell as his back protested – but he forced himself to straighten, finding that when he did, he was actually looking down at the shade, at least for a few seconds.

 

Then time seemed to stop, as the shade was no longer near him but farther away – once more hidden in shadow. There was no movement that he could tell, just a sudden distance between them.

 

“He is not yours to have,” the shade said, the tone as cold as the air around them. “He was mine long before he was yours – long before he was Buck’s. It takes two of you to hold him. And you’re not certain you even want this.”

 

“I do want this,” he said, knowing it for the truth. Knowing himself. “Chris knows that – better than anyone else.”

 

The shade made a noise, not a laugh but disdainful. “He may say that, but in some things, he doesn’t know himself. He loved me once, made me promises. Then he took a trip from which he never returned. He had a son once, but he also deserted him, leaving him to die.”

 

“That ain’t what happened,” Vin said. “He came back – but it was too late. He ain’t forgiven himself for it, not yet.”

 

The others head tilted and for an instant, there was the distinct impression of red in the darkness just before the answer. “Then why does he not visit me? Why are you the one here, the one who comes to visit the dead?”

 

Vin drew in a breath, looking around. The moonlight seemed to be brighter now, the shadows lessening. The shade also seemed to be lessening, shrinking back with the shadows. “Didn’t know I was coming to visit,” he said softly. “You sure you didn’t come to me?”

 

There was a hiss of anger, and the shade stepped forward, out of the shadows and into the light.

 

But only for a second: the moonlight was stark, the bones sharp under the thin, withered skin, lank hair hanging in ragged strands over the rotting cloth of old clothes. The thin face turned to him, eye sockets black and empty and one hand reached out as if to beckon him. But what he saw instead was a large ring, the stone catching the moonlight and throwing lines of red across the ground.

 

Then pain exploded inside his head, so fierce and unexpected that he was barely aware of falling, barely aware of anything at all. Only a faint whisper of words before the red gave way to black: ‘Tell him I miss him . . .’

 

He came to slowly, pain radiating from so many places that the various types and intensities were hard to separate. Slowly, more information filtered in as he tried to distract himself from the pain: he was on his back, on one of the beds in the house, he was too warm but not yet unbearably so, and someone was pressed up against him, a heartbeat steady in his ear.

 

Listening to the heartbeat, strong and steady, distracted him for a time, lulling him into a sort of meditation that wasn’t sleep but wasn’t consciousness. It was, though, security. And peace. Two things he thought he’d never find. Two things that he never took for granted, despite what everyone else seemed to think.

 

The state of contentment came to a gentle end, starting with the heartbeat picking up speed. Vin slowly came back to himself, aware that he needed now to move, to pee, to cool down. He shifted, trying to roll onto one side, but the movement set off spikes of pain from his back and hip, and a wave of nausea that drew most of his attention and self-control. As he concentrated on breathing and keeping the contents of his stomach in his stomach, he was helped by a careful hand rubbing his upper back, steady and slow and pleasant.

 

Eventually the nausea ebbed, and as much as he was enjoying the attention, he sighed and pushed himself up. His head swam for a few seconds, but he managed to swing his legs over the side of the bed.

 

Standing, though, was an altogether different matter, and it was with reluctant acceptance that he let Buck draw him up and steady him as they made their way across the room to the adjacent bath.

 

He managed on his own once he was in the bathroom, and washing his face with cold water helped clear some of the fog out of his head. As he opened the door, he realized that the curtains were drawn but there was the outline of light around them, letting him know it was well into the morning.

 

Buck was sitting on the bed, and he rose as Vin walked slowly out of the bathroom. “You all right?” he asked, coming to take Vin’s arm.

 

“Been better. Though I think some of it’s from the drugs y’all slipped to me last night.” His voice was rough and he cleared his throat.

 

“You can blame Chris for that,” Buck said with a chuckle. “Reckon he won’t be doing it again, though. Finding you passed out on the porch last night scared him right good.”

 

Vin frowned, trying to remember the night before. There was something . . .

 

“Why were you outside, anyway?” Buck asked, helping Vin settle on the bed. “When we went to sleep, you were zonked out – and, I might add, between us. Reckon you must have gone over me to get out, but I don’t remember it. Chris didn’t wake up neither, which is pretty odd.”

 

It was odd – actually, more than odd; Chris slept so lightly that most nights, he let the cat in when it finally made its way to the porch, any time between ten and four am. As the porch was on the other side of the house and one floor down, it had taken Vin a while to realize that it wasn’t just some weird coincidence when he awoke to find Boris curled around his head.

 

“I don’t recall,” Vin said with a sigh. He eased himself up on the pillows, trying to find a position that didn’t anger his lower back. “Was a pretty weird night. I had this dream . . .”

 

It came in pieces, images of the shade, of the moonlight, of the red beams. Phrases and random sentences, more the sound of the voice than what was actually said, and in no order. He sorted through them for a time, while Buck covered him with the blankets and opened the curtains and blinds. The sun was bright but warm, slowly relaxing him.

 

By the time Buck got back from the kitchen, a tray of toast, water, juice, and fruit in hand, Vin had a reasonably coherent pattern for his dream – and he was convinced that that had been what it was. What else could it have been? In the bright light of day, nothing else made any sense.

 

“So you had this dream,” Buck said, waving one hand while holding his coffee mug in the other.

 

“Where’s Chris?” Vin asked, frowning. He’d been aware of the other man’s absence, and it seemed more significant now, thinking on his dream.

 

“Travis wanted him to come in to HQ for a debriefing on the mission. No, it ain’t about you, though I reckon – as do you – that there will be some questions as to why you went off script. But it turns out that that kid you tried to save was actually the son of some big hooha in Canada. They thought he’d been kidnapped, so you might be more of a hero than we thought.” He grinned at that, though Vin saw the worry in his eyes.

 

“Just sorry I was wrong,” Vin said, reaching out to catch Buck’s hand. “And that he’s dead. Reckon that was part of what happened last night. Between the meds and what happened . . .”

 

Buck’s grin faded, slowly turning to a frown. “That time of year, you know. While I do love a good Halloween party, the day after . . . well . . .” He rose from the bed and wandered over to the window, looking out into the morning. He had pulled on jeans and an old sweatshirt, but he was barefoot, and he moved from foot to foot on the cold hardwood floor.

 

Vin thought it through. “Day of the Dead?”

 

Buck turned around and drew his shoulders up, crossing his arms over his chest. His coffee mug, now empty, dangled from the fingers of one hand. “Weird day to celebrate, if you ask me. Josiah’s tried explaining it to me, but inviting ghosts back to dinner just don’t seem right.”

 

Despite himself, Vin grinned. Buck was a practical man, one who lived in the moment, and the constraints of history and religion were alien to him in ways that Vin understood but also found amusing. When he gave it thought, which he did with some regularity, now that they shared a bed and almost everything else, he suspected that it was because of the differences in how they’d grown up.

 

Buck shook his head, as if shaking off the superstition, and said, “So what did happen last night?” He moved to the lean against the dresser, his arms still crossed over his chest though he took a minute to put down the mug. In its place, he reached for a piece of apple, munching on it.

 

Vin sipped from the juice and swallowed, then slowly recounted what he could remember of what he thought of as a dream. “Couldn’t rightly tell who the shade was, though I think it musta been a woman. But I don’t know many dead women – my ma, sure, but I’d a known her, ‘specially in my dreams.”

 

Buck tilted his head to one side, looking at Vin. “We found you on the porch. Where did you think you were?”

 

“In the treeline, near the barns. Musta been going to check on the horses. But I don’t know. Just know the place was familiar and the ground was cold.”

 

“You were pretty damned cold when we found you, and you were laid out like you’d gone six rounds. Scared me – scared us both – that you hardly woke up, even with both of us dragging you in and up the stairs.” He let his arms drop down, his hands going into his pockets.

 

“Shoulda left me on the couch,” Vin said, feeling no little guilty for their trouble.

 

Buck grinned, the wide, forgiving grin that had made Vin fall for him. “Couldn’t get you warm between us that way.” But the grin once more became a frown as he went on, “Tell me again about this ghost.”

 

“Ain’t much to tell. Thought it was a woman, but that’s more a feeling than anything else. Long hair, but couldn’t tell a color. Shorter ‘n me, though that, too, is more a feeling – wasn’t close but once and then suddenly, we weren’t. Said she misses Chris. Now that I think on it, that’s about the most of what she said. Said neither one of us deserve him, but seeing as it was a dream, that’s most like my own fear talking.” He frowned as he saw the look on Buck’s face; it was both one of puzzlement but also worry.

 

“She have a boy with her?” he asked, his voice gone quiet, almost a whisper, and as he said the last, he glanced to the closed bedroom door, as if he expected it to open at any second.

 

Despite himself, Vin looked at the door as well as he answered, “Didn’t see one. Wasn’t a mention of one. You think I was seeing Sara?” He found that he, too, had lowered his voice, as if expecting Chris to appear.

 

Buck blew out a slow breath, looking from the door to Vin. He started to speak, then he stopped, tilting his head a little more to the side, looking hard at Vin. Then with another slow breath, he said, still very quietly, “Why not? I do.”

 

At first, he didn’t understand the words – until he did. With effort, he pushed against the mattress, forcing himself painfully up. “What?” he said as he pushed the pillows back against the wall and sat back against them. “What do you mean?”

 

Buck swallowed and looked down. He pushed his hands farther into the pockets of his jeans, as if he were truly cold, then said, “They come to me. Pretty much every year ‘bout this time. Maybe Josiah’s right about the Day of the Dead thing.”

 

“So – you dream about her? Or are you saying . . .”

 

Buck shrugged awkwardly, still looking at his feet. “I try to convince myself that it’s dreams, but kinda hard to be dreaming when you’re standing in the middle of the kitchen with your head in the fridge.”

 

Vin swallowed, vaguely aware that he was crossing his own arms over his chest, feeling a chill. “Always ‘bout this time of year. Since you moved in?”

 

Buck did look up then. “No, since they died. During the years after, when Chris was – well, when we didn’t see each other, they came more, not just at this time of the year, but other times. I figure that they came when he was doing something stupid. Sara was always worried about him them, always wanted me to try to stop him.” He sighed then added, “She’s probably why I finally looked to find him. Got tired of thinking I was going crazy and figured that if I checked in on him, maybe my conscience - ‘cause that’s what I assumed it was – would let up. And they did – though they still come every year.”

 

“This year?”

 

“Not yet – figure it’s tonight. Though maybe . . . you sure you didn’t see Adam?”

 

Vin ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it off his face as he tried once more to sort through the memories of the dream – or whatever it was – from the night before. As he did, he considered the pictures of the woman he knew as Sara Larabee, and her son. They had been dead years before Vin met Chris, and then Buck, but they had been a part of the relationship despite their absence.

 

“Don’t seem like it was her,” he said after a time. “Sense I have of her is like you said, that she would be worried about Chris. This shade, maybe she was worried about him, but she seemed more angry, angry that you and me are here, in the house with him, angry that he don’t - what was it she said?” He rubbed at his head, trying to get the memory to come. “She wanted to know why he doesn’t visit her. Why he doesn’t remember her. But that don’t seem like Chris. He still goes to the graves, don’t he? Couple of times a year?”

 

Buck straightened then stood, wandering back to the window. “Yeah. He told me once . . .” He paused, shifted from foot to foot, then turned and came back to the bed, slowly sitting down at Vin’s hip. “He told me,” he said again, more slowly and more quietly, “that he dreams about her, too. That he talks to her, before he makes any big decisions. Like, asking me to move in. Asking you to move in.”

 

Vin nodded, surprised, but not really. There was a side of Chris that he knew was there, and sometimes got glimpses of. Chris had confided a few times the depth to which he still missed his wife and child, the life that had been taken from him. Sara had been his closest friend during their marriage, and it was hard to imagine that he wouldn’t try to consult with her now, even if only in his dreams. Or at her graveside.

 

“So whoever I talked to, it weren’t her. This . . . person wasn’t one who had been talking to Chris. I think the last words I heard were something like ‘tell him I miss him’.” He reached out and touched Buck’s arm, then slowly slid his fingers to twine with Buck’s. “It wanted to know why I was the one coming to visit, and not Chris.”

 

Buck took Vin’s hand in both of his as he asked, “You went visiting? Not the other way around?”

 

Vin shrugged then regretted it as his back protested. “I ain’t sure what I was doing, Buck. I don’t remember anything ‘til I was talking to the ghost. I couldn’t tell you what got me out of bed or out the door, and I couldn’t tell you how I got back to the porch – though I reckon that I probably never made it off the porch.”

 

Buck swallowed, looking down to their joined hands. “Kinda scares me to think that some ghost we don’t know about was that close to the house.”

 

Vin grinned despite himself. “Thought you said Sara was in the house.”

 

Buck shook his head and looked back up, his face serious. “I know her. I know she won’t hurt us.”

 

“Us? She never met me.” Not that he was scared; he knew the dead too well, knew what they could and couldn’t do.

 

Buck shook his head. “First off, she likes you fine – you don’t think she knows who you are? You don’t think she’s been watching you since you came into Chris’ life – and mine?”

 

The idea of someone – alive or dead – watching him, watching them, made Vin squirm. The things they got up to . . .

 

Buck chuckled then, the low, dirty chuckle he got when he, too, was thinking thoughts about sex. “Yeah,” he went on, his voice deeper now, “I suspect she knows all that, too. But she doesn’t care, Vin. That was never Sara’s way. She wants Chris to be happy, and she knows he is, with us. You don’t think she showed up in the days before you moved in, when Chris and I were talking about it a lot? She already knew what was going on – kinda hard for her to miss it, as it was happening here just as much as it was happening at your place.”

 

Despite himself, Vin blushed. But he refused to give into the worry about it – dead was still dead.

 

“So if it wasn’t Sara last night – who was it? I keep thinking that if it was the kid from the other day, the conversation would have been very different. I mean, if it was a real ghost and not just my own self talking to me.”

 

Buck grinned at him, knowing that he was changing the conversation, but he didn’t object. Vin’s back was not up to doing anything that required movement – and despite what Buck would promise, they both knew there was no way that Vin would remain still without being tied down. And even that wasn’t a sure thing.

 

“Tell me again what you remember.” As Vin recounted the spare details, Buck continued to hold his hand, gently rubbing his fingers. Vin hadn’t realized how cold he was until now.

 

As he ended, Buck asked, “A ring? A ring with a red stone?” His tone was sharp, almost angry, and his grip had tightened on Vin’s hand, almost hurting.

 

Vin frowned, tugging at his hand to pull it free. “Yeah. What does that mean to you?”

 

Buck rose once more from the bed, his movements abrupt and sharp so that the bed shook. Vin gritted his teeth as the shaking jarred his back, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he watched as Buck paced several steps to the window, but he didn’t stop there. Instead, he turned, pacing toward the door then back. As he paced, his face grew darker and darker.

 

“Buck?” Vin prompted when Buck once more turned from the wall and started back toward the door.

 

“Don’t seem right,” he said, his tone hard. “Can’t see how she’d get here -” He stopped abruptly at the foot of the large bed and turned to Vin. “Where were you when she turned up?”

 

Vin shook his head. “Seemed to me that I was out toward the barns, near the treeline. That make a difference?”

 

“Least it wasn’t the house,” Buck said shortly. “If she ever gets that close -”

 

“Who?” Vin demanded, feeling, for the first time in all of this, an actual sense of dread.

 

But even as the word left his mouth, he knew. Buck’s words only confirmed it.

 

“The Bitch.”

 

He’d heard the story, though not in one telling; pieces of it came out at different times, in different ways. Chris only spoke of it when he was drunk, and speaking of it usually put him in such a dark place that Vin had learned to try to change the subject. Later, more soberly, Buck would explain pieces of it, but even he had not told the story straight through.

 

“She knew this was Chris’ home?” he asked, surprised to hear his voice shake a little.

 

“This was Sara and Adam’s home, as well as Chris’,” Buck said shortly. “ ‘Course she knew about it.” He drew in a breath, then, long and deep, and Vin saw him work to get himself under control. When he spoke again, his tone was less sharp. “Scares me, though, to think that she came here, that she spied on Sara and Adam before she -” He couldn’t say the words, but he didn’t have to.

 

This was the one part of the story that was clear: this woman from Chris’ past had killed Sara and Adam.

 

And in return, eventually, Chris had hunted her down and killed her.

 

Buck had been part of that, too, and from what Vin could tell, this hadn’t happened so long ago, just before the current team had come together.

 

Just before he had been recruited.

 

“Well, no way to know the laws for ghosts,” he said, shifting in the pillows. “Even if she is a ghost, and she is here – which I ain’t saying is the case; it coulda just been a dream, after all – but even if she was a ghost, don’t mean that she’s been her before.” Though – she had; he recalled her first words, that he hadn’t been here last year.

 

Buck started walking again, but this time, he went to the window, pulling the curtain sheers wide apart to let in even more light. It was almost blinding, but right now, Vin appreciated it.

 

“Chris told me once that back when he was with her, long before Sara – hell, long before me – he gave her a ring. It wasn’t a diamond, but it was big – he was young and didn’t know much about rings, or even women at the time. But when she showed back up the second time, when he was putting his life back together, she was wearing it. Hell, I saw it then. It was cheap – a big red garnet set in silver – but she had it on every time I saw her.” He turned from the window, pushing at the sleeves of his sweat shirt. “After he found out about her, figured out what she’d done and she ran, she sent him a picture of the two of them, one that had been taken one of the last nights they’d been together. She’d thrown a party – hell, I’d been there. It was a celebration of them getting back together. It’d been a formal thing, like an old dinner party. She’d had a photographer there, taking pictures, and she’d gotten Chris into a real tuxedo. He hadn’t thought much of it, but apparently, she had. She sent a picture to him, of the two of them together. In it, she showed off the ring. In the letter, she called herself Ella Gaines Larabee, saying that they were wed that night and that the ring he’d given her so long ago was an engagement ring.”

 

Vin felt the chill again, saw once more the moonlight turned red as he fell to the ground. “She did say she misses Chris, that he won’t talk to her . . .”

 

“Yeah, I just bet she does,” Buck snarled. “Woman was bat-shit crazy. Guess it makes sense she would still be trying to get him, even now.”

 

Vin swallowed and pushed himself to the side of the bed. He needed to get up, to move around.

 

To get his head out of this way of thinking. As he carefully turned, getting his legs over the side of the bed, Buck said, “You’re thinking this is all superstition.”

 

Vin stretched carefully, trying to relieve some of the ache in his back. “I’m thinking that I don’t need to take any more of them pain pills.”

 

Buck tilted his head to one side, frowning at Vin. “Well, like I said, I ain’t been on any pain meds.”

 

“And you haven’t seen this woman – have you?” Carefully, he got to his feet, trying to keep his back as straight as possible. It wasn’t easy, especially when his hip also reminded him that it was still recovering, but now, strangely, the discomfort was welcome.

 

It reminded him of reality, his reality.

 

Buck shifted, coming to stand closer. Vin could tell he was concerned for him, and that that concern was tempering the anger. “No, I’ve never seen her. But then, don’t reckon I would, unless it was to find a way to get even with me.”

 

Vin looked at him, debating whether to ask. As so often happened with the two of them, Buck volunteered the answer on his own.

 

“I killed her,” he said simply. “Chris tried, but he couldn’t do it. Not sure why – he had enough anger. But he simply couldn’t pull the trigger.”

 

Buck was looking at him, and Vin met his gaze and held it. “Ain’t easy to kill someone,” he said quietly. “I been doing it for going on twenty years, and every time is just like the first.”

 

He wasn’t judging, wasn’t his place to do so. The Marine Corps had trained him well in technique, but finding his personal acceptance of this job, this craft, had been hard won, and one he still struggled with.

 

With a sigh, Buck nodded. “Don’t regret what I did. She was crazy. Sara and Adam weren’t her only victims. She had killed at least three husbands and created two situations that led to others getting hurt. When she escaped from Chris the first time, she had set up this drive-by shooting at her house, to make her look like a target. That was how she’d come to him, to us, that time, by saying that she needed help. She’d even taken out a hit on herself, and Chris had already ‘saved’ her once. But that night, that time . . .” He shook his head and Vin saw something else in his eyes, a grief that he didn’t understand.

 

“When we finally found her, there was a lot of blood on her hands,” he said simply. “I did what I had to do. The DA decided it was self-defense, which, in a way, it was. But he was taking into account the fact that she had a gun in her hand and it had been fired – at me, not at Chris. She couldn’t shoot at him any more than he could shoot at her.” He moved in closer, sliding a hand around Vin’s waist. He then slipped his other around Vin’s shoulders and pulled him close – not into a kiss, but into a full body hug.

 

Vin returned it, carefully lifting his arms and settling against the taller man. It was true to Buck’s character that he could talk about killing someone but wanted the reassurance of physical contact to know that he was forgiven for it – or at least not condemned.

 

The hug didn’t last long, Vin’s back wouldn’t let it, and as it ended, Buck leaned down for a quick, warm kiss. He tasted of coffee and a hint of sweetness, from the apple, and Vin realized he was hungry. The toast and fruit were still on the dresser, but he wanted something more.

 

“Reckon if she’s here, there ain’t much we can do,” Buck sighed, easing back though he still kept an arm around Vin’s waist.

 

“You know,” Vin said slowly, “I’ve known ‘bout ghosts most of my life. My kin have always honored the dead, it’s part of the culture. We were taught that the dead can’t really hurt us. What they do is make us hurt ourselves.”

 

Buck was quiet as they walked across the bedroom toward the door. Vin hadn’t said he wanted to walk, but sometimes with Buck, he didn’t have to explain what he wanted. Buck just seemed to know. This was one of those times.

 

They made it down the stairs, slowly and carefully, and then into the kitchen, where Vin let himself be settled at the table while Buck worked on something more substantial for them to eat. They talk was now of more practical things, of Chris’ report to Travis, of the last assignment, of the one they knew was upcoming. It was as if what they had discussed in the bedroom, the information they had exchanged, was from a different time.

 

A time that was not real.

 

But after they finished the breakfast Buck had prepared, as he was loading the dishwasher and the conversation had turned to the things that needed to be done here, while they were home, Vin looked out the window, toward the barns.

 

He thought he saw something move in the treeline, and as he looked more closely, he saw a figure.

 

It could have been anything. A horse, a cat, a dog, a bird . . .

 

Then a faint red light diffused through the shadows.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a universe of my ow making; it is modern, and in it, Travis is the managing partner in a security firm that does military, government, and private jobs of intelligence, anti-terrorism, and 'preventative' services. The seven are not a new group, but the timeline is not exact to the series - as you can tell from this story.


End file.
